It's near the end of the year...I start thinking...

I am no activist. I am no one.

Growing up, we travelled, several times a year. I am so fortunate to have had to opportunity to visit so many of the National Parks and historical places. At 17, I became a foreign exchange student, to Australia. I spent a year in the public school system and helping to raise animals on my host family's farmette. Like my own parents, my host family also took me travelling. After coming home to graduate from high school, I went back to Queensland, for another year...most of which was spent on horseback with my best friend and her parents. What I learned from my childhood, was that I loved nature...all nature. I loved the sameness and the differences.

When I came back home I intended to go to college. But, my mother, a talented surgical nurse, couldn't agree with me on a career that she would be willing to pay the fee for. I didn't want to be a nurse. I wanted to study nature. She felt it wasn't a financially sound choice. So....I went to work. First, at a donut shop, then a baker at a restaurant, a waitress, a line cook...who cares. I got married, but my husband didn't work very often. Finally, though, I was making enough money that with a small student loan, I could afford to go to school at night, while working full time during the day. I chose to take Madison Area Tech's Recreational Resource Management program. Near the end of my second semester, I got pregnant. Sara was born in August, so I was still able to continue into the next semester. But, she died, a few months later...and I dropped out. I found out later, that my loan had immediately come due, when I dropped out...and then, the last straw...MATC dropped the Recreational Resource Management program...there was no reason for me to go back, anyway.

I took off for NYC...lived there for several years, doing nothing useful with my life. I spent every free moment at the Natural History Museum in Central Park...must have bought every book in their gift shop. Then at last I came back to Wisconsin. Here I am, at 40 years old...no one...uneducated...unsure what, if anything, I can do about it.

I am no activist.